The
amazing thing about the photographs in this book is how ordinary
they are. And it has been mostly ordinary people who have posed
naked before the lens since the introduction of photography
in 1839. Until recent times, such private revelations had to
be cloaked in secrecy. One could be sent to jail or run out
of town otherwise. Yet the temptation to bare it all for immortality
has persisted.

The history of photography is mainly about the documentation
of everyday objects—rocks on the beach and flowers in
a vase (which artists like Edward Weston and Robert Mapplethorpe
took to sublime form)—and, of course, the human body.
The masters of that subject are too numerous to list here. Suffice
to say the anonymous maker of these images would not be counted
among them. They are adequate pictures, meant to record a moment
and perhaps to arouse the viewer, but nothing more. Yet given
the context in which they were taken—and then much later
found—they are indeed special.

The male nude has always suffered in comparison with its female
counterpart. The latter could be passed off as “art”
or a guilty pleasure, while similar photographic studies of
men were far more shrouded and prone to suspect. When these
images were sold, they were distributed as health guides, artist’s
references, or bodybuilding models. Because of the postal laws,
even the finest photographers faced imprisonment for producing
frontal pictures of naked men. The male nudes in this book appear
to be post-Second World War servicemen. Whether they are lovers,
shipmates, or just simply guys on the loose, we will never know.
The poses range from coy and earnest to all-out ballsy, but
there is a kind of innocence seen throughout that is hard to
find in today’s primped and pumped naked poseurs. While
the word shy hardly comes to mind, there is a certain sweetness
in their flagrant posing.

They are ordinary men in simple settings, photographed without
artistic intent. (In photography, the term “vernacular”
literally means “of the commonplace,” which certainly
applies here.) The negatives were found in a box under a bed
in the mid-Eighties after the original owner, and maybe photographer,
had deceased. Although most likely never intended for public
display, these images offer a unique voyeuristic snapshot of
intimate moments caught long ago. They shed new light on one
of the most prolific and eccentric artists of photography’s
fascinating past: “Unknown.”
-- Mark Thompson from the Introduction to the exhibition
catalogExhibition
catalog available for purchase here